April 17, 2024: Mythic Patriotisms: “Self-Made”

[Up herein New England, the third Monday in April is a holiday, Patriots’Day. But as I argue in mymost recent book, patriotism is a very complex concept, and so this week I’llhighlight a handful of examples of the worst of what it has meant for how weremember our histories. Leading up to a weekend post on the state of mythicpatriotism in 2024!]

On how aniconic American image is mythic patriotic in both meanings and effects.

I’vewritten at length in this space about the mythic but ubiquitous American narrativeof the “self-made man”: first for one of my earliest postsin October 2011 (man I’ve been writing this blog for a long time!); andthen in aFebruary 2021 follow-up as part of my annual non-favorites series. Before Idive into a couple ways to connect that mythic narrative to the concept ofmythic patriotism, I’d ask you to check out those two posts if you would.

Welcomeback! Obviously it would be possible for any person to be described as “self-made,”but I believe it’s quite telling that almost all of the figures most commonly associatedwith this narrative have been white men: Ben Franklin, Andrew Jackson, AndrewJohnson, Andrew Carnegie (something about those Andrews, I dunno), pretty muchall of Horatio Alger’s protagonists, Jay Gatsby, contemporary folks like BillGates and Mark Zuckerberg, etc. While the self-made man narrative is ostensiblya celebration of  such individuals andtheir achievements, it is at least as much a rejection of the presence andinfluence of communities—or even a direct attack on them as an obstacle to betranscended in pursuit of the American Dream. I’d certainly call that vision ofAmerican identities mythic in general, but I would also add that it is a mythwhich specifically and overtly privileges white men, who for most if not all ofAmerican history have had a greater degree of autonomy and mobility than anyother group. To be clear, even those iconic individual white men have dependedon communal support, so the image is mythic in their cases too—but itsrejection of the need for community does exclude most other Americans, past andpresent.

Theproblems with mythic patriotic narratives aren’t just due to their inaccuraciesand exclusions, though—it’s also in the ways they can contribute to or even helpcreate other, sometimes even more overtly exclusionary, narratives. Forexample, I would say it’s far from coincidental that the late 19thcentury in America was both an era in which the self-made man narrativeproliferated and a period of intensifyingattacks on the nascent labor movement as un- and anti-American. After all,at the heart of that evolving labor movement was an emphasis on workers’communities in at least two key ways: that supposedly “self-made” individualslike the Gilded Age Robber Barons were instead achieving their successes on thebacks of those communities; and that it would thus take communal solidarity toresist and challenge and change those realities. In my early 20thcentury chapter of OfThee I Sing I argue that 1910s and 1920s attacks on the labor movementconstituted a potent form of mythic patriotism, but I would add that thosetrends really began in the late 19th century, right alongside theresurgence of the self-made man narrative.

Nextpatriotism post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think?